In most meetings, both big and small, with customers, suppliers, internal, training, between private persons and neighborhood communities etc, there are no minutes or common notes. Consequently, there are often subsequent conflicts or poor interpretations and even when there are minutes, these can be the subjective views of the person who wrote them. The most neutral and objective method is to record everything that is said at the meeting. There are existing recording mechanisms that at used at certain meetings, but these are usually expensive and not very operational. Moreover, the meeting protocol and management are normally the responsibility of just one person with secretary functions that consume time in operations that are usually repetitive and of little value.
There is currently a great deal of development in the state of the art to permit tele-conferencing employing the new technologies, the Internet and Webcams etc, but the objective here, is to facilitate tele-presence and avoid the need to travel. There are also patents in the technical field, such as “Method and system for managing a meeting” (US2007/0033091), which describe a method for managing the attendance of participants at a meeting, as well as the matters to be dealt with, but which do not manage the information involved or record the content.
Another problem deriving from recording a meeting when there are several recorders that record what is said, is the audio mixing. Automatic processes are currently in use for such mixing, but not all take into account that the audio mixing is in real time in local mode, in other words, that they are processed at the same time and locally in order to perform the mixing. This involves the use of specific devices and technology, such as an audio mixer table, a computer with various audio inputs for simultaneous signal processing etc. If, in addition, they are simple devices, such as mobile telephones or an electronic agenda, with single audio and communications channels which, because of the data communications characteristics over the network, these are sent in the form of packets, it means that the audio reception of the various sources does not occur in synchronization with the required precision level. For example, in HTTP communications, which is based on packet routing, involves communication delays. This effect increases with packet size and channel saturation. If the calculation time in information encrypting is considered, which depends on the calculation capability of each device, means that transmission can vary from one device to another or their connection type varies if it is a modem or 3G. If the data pass over a network non-measurable delays take place that are not uniform for the devices. Nor is it possible to use the start of recording because the devices are not al switched on at the same time and some may even switched some time during the actual meeting. It should be understood that even the slightest phase mismatch can be quite noticeable to the listener.